CNS Touts Pre-Election GDP Numbers To Help Trump Topic: CNSNews.com
The Trump-fliuffers at CNSNews.com put in one last pre-election effort to boost his campaign, managing to get a whopping four articles out of a relatively good-looking GDP number.
"GDP Grew at Record 33.1% in 3rd Quarter," proclaimed the headline of Susan Jones' Oct. 29 article, complete with photo of a grinning, thumbs-up Trump to reinforce the message that he should be given credit. Jones reinforce it further in the copy:
The key indicator of an economic rebound comes at an opportune time for President Trump, just days before the presidential election.
“This record economic growth is absolute validation of President Trump’s policies which create jobs and opportunities for Americans in every corner of the country," Tim Murtaugh, Trump's campaign communications director, said in a statement released by the White House[.]
Jones followed that with a full five paragraphs of Murtaugh shilling for his boss.
That was followed by an anonymously written article that tried to dunk on Nancy Pelosi for criticizing the economy the day before the GDP number came out:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, appearing on MSNBC on Wednesday, said that “now we’re in worse shape” in response to a question about the “markets falling.”
The next day, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its report for the 3rd quarter of 2020, stating that real Gross Domestic Product grew at an annual rate of 33.1 percent during the quarter.
Craig Bannister checked in with a blog post about Trump-loving Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera complaining that Trump won't getcredit for the GDP growth because "Big Media is so toxic." Bannister also gave space to Rivera to spin away the growth in coronavirus cases in the U.S. because his critics "they should realize that the virus has surged in other countries, too – and they can’t blame Trump for that."
Finally, CNS sent an intern to Capitol Hill to ask Pelosi, "The economy grew at an annual rate of 33.1 percent in the third quarter. Does President Trump deserve any credit for that?" Pelosi responded with the argably more accurate point that the CARES Act, which pumped billions into the economy, deserved the credit for the GDP post. CNS loves to send interns to pester members of Congress.
CNS Does Damage Control For Trump Chief of Staff Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com worked until the very end to play damage control and cleanup on behalf of President Trump's re-election.
On Oct. 25, Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows got himself into a spot of bother when he admitted on CNN that "We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas." That didn't go over well -- a fact reinforced by CNS, which ignored the remark at first. It took nearly two full days after Meadows said it for CNS to acknowledge it, apparently requiring that long to come up with a way to spin it. That angle -- blaming Joe Biden for taking Meadows out of context -- debuted in an article by Susan Jones:
Giving a speech near his home in Delaware Monday, Vice President Joe Biden said, "Look, yesterday White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows went on television to admit to the country his administration wasn't even trying -- trying anymore to deal with the pandemic." He said, and I quote, 'We're not going to control the pandemic.'"
Yes, Meadows used those words. But clearly, Meadows did not mean the Trump administration is giving up.
Here's what Meadows actually told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, in context:
[...]
So clearly Meadows meant that the contagious virus is impossible to control, absent a job-killing lockdown, until therapies and vaccines are able to keep it at bay. Meadows did not mean the Trump administration doesn't care about controlling it.
Jones further complained that "Biden made that comment after reporters asked Mark Meadows about his 'we're not going to control the pandemic' remark on Monday morning," in which he did his own damage control.
This was joined by an article from Melanie Arter attacking MSNBC host for noting Meadows' remarks (and referencing Jones' attempt at damage control):
MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday compared the Trump administration’s approach to the coronavirus to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt saying during his re-election campaign that we’re not going to win WWII.
On MSNBC’s “Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” O’Donnell was referring to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadow’s comments over the weekend, saying that we’re not “we’re not going to control the pandemic. We’re going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas.”
As CNSNews.com reported, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden twisted Meadows’ words, claiming that Meadows “went on television to admit to the country his administration wasn't even trying -- trying anymore to deal with the pandemic."
That's basically all CNS had on this. It seems even they didn't think it was all that defensible.
CNS Still Portraying Biden As Senile Topic: CNSNews.com
We've documented how CNSNews.com has pushed the Trump-approved narrative that Joe Biden is suffering from some sort of cognitive decline, while getting all huffy when President Trump's cognitive skills are questioned. That hasn't stopped.
Craig Bannister served as a Trump stenographer in an Oct. 9 article: "Former Vice President Joe Biden is in “no condition” to be Democrats’ candidate for president, President Donald Trump said Friday in an appearance on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show."
Bannister hyped on Oct. 12 how "Democrat [sic] presidential candidate Joe Biden declared that he is running 'for the Senate'- repeating a mistake he made earlier this year."
Patrick Goodenough uncritically repeated another Trump attack in an Oct. 13 article gushing that "President Trump came out guns blazing against Joe Biden during his first post-coronavirus diagnosis campaign trip to Florida on Monday, comparing his Democratic challenger’s mental acuity unfavorably with those of autocratic leaders presidents have to contend with," saying that "the leaders of China, Russia and North Korea have '100 percent sharp minds' while Biden’s was not even 60 percent."
An unbylined Oct. 26 article highlighted Biden saying in a "60 Minutes" interview that "people should compare his 'physical and mental acuity' to those of President Donald Trump." The same day, though, Susan Jones took Biden out of context to falsely make him look addled:
Here's one of the Monday morning tweets from President Donald Trump: "Joe Biden called me George yesterday. Couldn’t remember my name. Got some help from the anchor to get him through the interview. The Fake News Cartel is working overtime to cover it up!"
Biden, along with his wife Jill, was addressing an "I Will Vote" concert via video on Sunday when he made the point that this is a most consequential election:
"Four more years of George, uh -- George uh -- he, uh --we're going to find ourselves in a position where, if Trump gets elected, we're going to be in a different world."
In fact, Biden was speaking to his interviewer, George Lopez. Jones has yet to update or correct her article.
CNS also wants you to think that Biden is a creep. An Oct. 7 article by Bannister proclaimed that "Video of Democrat [sic] presidential candidate Joe Biden calling girl dancers at cultural center “beautiful” and telling them he wants to see them dancing “when they’re four years older” has gone viral. Needless to say, Bannister didn't mention Trump's history of creepiness with women.
As usual, CNS didn't take it well when questions were raised about Trump's mental acuity. In an Oct. 9 article, Jones huffily wrote about Nancy Pelosi saying that "The President is, shall we say, in an altered state right now" due to the medication he was taking to recover from coronavirus, further complaining: "Press reports say Pelosi intends to establish a commission on presidential capacity -- a committee of medical experts who would assess the president more objectively, supposedly, than members of his own Cabinet would."
To call Jake Tapper's Sunday interview with Lara Trump contentious may be understating it.
The CNN anchor was impatient, rude and angry as he brought the interview to an abrupt end.
Tapper accused Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law, of mocking Joe Biden's stutter, even though she said she had no idea that Biden overcame stuttering; and Tapper also accused Lara of diagnosing Biden's cognitive decline without a medical license.
Jones declared this to be "an interview that leaves no doubt about partisan media activists working hard to defeat Trump and elect Biden." She won't admit publicly she has left no doubt that she's a partisan media activist working hard to defeat Biden and elect Trump, in part by elevating sleazy smears about Biden's purported mental state.
CNS' Debate Bias, Part 2: Still Nitpicking Biden, Giving Trump A Pass Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com covered the final presidential debate the way it covered the first one: fact-checking, rebuttals and snark for Joe Biden, while President Trump got stenography and no fact-checking, even though it made a headline out of a false Trump claim.
Patrick Goodenough enthusiastically attacked Biden in his usual way that he won't do to Trump, obsessing over how Biden said the U.S. should move to net-aero emissions by 2025, point out how that’s a quarter of a century earlier than the target date set in the Paris climate accords," then adding how "around four minutes later, Biden offered different dates – 2035 for “net-zero” emissions in the energy sector, and 2050 as the goal to achieve net-zero emissions overall." Melanie Arter followed by making a big deal out of Biden denying that he opposes fracking and to "show the tape" of him saying otherwise, then touting how "Trump obliged" by "tweet[ing] a video montage of Biden saying he would eliminate fracking."
Susan Jones meanwhile, highlighted how "Democrat [sic] presidential nominee" Biden wouldn't rule out future shutdowns to slow the spread of coronavirus, then let Trumprebut him by touting how he said that "'99 percent of people recover' from COVID, including him." Jones also rebutted Biden's claim that he has never taken money from foreign sources by rehashing the Hunter Biden "scandal" that CNS and right-wing have been pushing for weeks, though she offered no evidence that proves Joe Biden profited in any way.
Trump, of course, got no such scrutiny from CNS. Jones gave space to Trump to reframe Biden's statement that he would transition away fromoil as a claim he would "destroy the oil industry," then topped it off with a post-debate comment from a Republican congressman that "Russia and China and India are happy because Joe Biden is going to destroy our economy in the name of saving the environment."
President Donald Trump defended his decision to end the practice of catch and release in the last presidential debate in Nashville, Tenn., on Thursday against claims by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden that illegal immigrants who are released and given a court date show up for immigration court.
“The catch and release. Do you know what he's talking about there? If in fact you had a family that came across. They were arrested. They in fact were given a date to show up for their hearing. They were released, and guess what, they showed up for a hearing,” Biden said.
[...]
The president said he terminated catch and release, because it was “a disaster.”
“It just shows that he has no understanding of immigration of the laws. Catch and release is a disaster. A murderer would come in. A rapist would come in. A very bad person would come in. We would take their name. We have to release them into our country, and then you say they come back. Less than 1% of the people come back,” Trump said.
“Not true,” Biden interjected.
“We have to send ICE out and Border Patrol out to find them. We would say come back in two years, three years. We're going to give you a court case. You need Perry Mason. We're going to give you a court case. When you say they come back, they don't come back, Joe. They never come back. Only the really, I hate to say this, but those with the lowest I.Q., they might come back,” Trump said.
Arter didn't tell her readers that Biden was right -- Trump's claim isn't true at all. According to the Department of Justice, more than half of immigrants return for court hearings, far more than the 1% Trump claimed, and there's no evidence intelligence is a factor.
That's how CNS' bias works.
UPDATE: We forgot to note that CNS also did a highly biased pro-Trump run-up to the debate. It devoted an entire Oct. 20 article by Jones to regurgitating the Trump campaign's whining about the changes the debate commission made for the final debate -- which included the ability to mute a candidate -- even reproducing the entirety of the "lengthy letter" campaign chairman Bill Stepien sent the commission. Stepien claimed that "the final debate was supposed to focus on foreign policy," but the debate commission never said it would be the sole focus -- an important fact Jones failed to tell her readers.
The same day, Arter uncritically repeated how Trump "criticized the moderator of the upcoming last presidential debate NBC White House Correspondent Kristen Welker, telling Fox News on Tuesday that she’s worse than C-SPAN’s Joe [sic: Steve] Scully, because she has ties to the Democrat [sic] Party." And Goodenough chimed in by claiming that Trump "had a small foretaste" of getting muted at the debate when his microphone went out during a rally, going on to rehash previous Trump campaign criticism of the decision.
CNS' On-Again, Off-Again Interest In Chicago Crime Is (Briefly) On Again Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com is only sporadically interested in weekend crime figures in cities like Chicago -- mostly when it serves its right-wing agenda to be. After a spate of concern over weekend shootings as social justice protests spread in late spring and early summer, CNS started losing interest when the protests died down.
CNS feigned concern through July and August in a transparent attempt to help boost President Trump's re-election. But nearly all of those articles were written by a CNS summer intern; when he left, the stories stopped. But after a month and a half of silence -- and, not coincidentially, a few weeks before the presidential election -- an Oct. 13 article (yes, by an intern) resumed the body-count interest:
Although the national media largely ignore the rampant gun violence in the Windy City, the local media in Chicago reported that 53 people were shot, five fatally, over this past weekend (Oct. 9-12).
Five of the people wounded in the shootings are juveniles, according to CBS2 Chicago.
Interestingly, that was it. it seems that CNS decided the crime story wasn't a winner for its agenda and its interns could be better deployed elsewhere -- say, on Hunter Biden articles.
CNS Slobbers Over Trump's Minor Israel Peace Deals Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com reporter Patrick Goodenoughused to be a relatively unbiased repoerter (by CNS standards, anyway). Over the past couple years, he's been sliding toward pro-Trump hagiography and anti-Democratic attacks. His articles drooling over President Trump's deals with minor Arab countries to recognize Israel is one more step down for him.
On Aug. 31, Goodenough gushed over "the first commercial flight between Israel and the United Arab Emirates" and how "White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien both expressed optimism Sunday that other Arab countries would follow the UAE in normalizing relations with the Jewish state" after thte USE ended a boycott of Israel.
A week later, after Kosovo did something similar, Goodenough was sounding like a Trump White House press release:
It took more than four decades for the first two Muslim-majority countries to recognize and normalize ties with Israel, and now that number has doubled in less than a month, with Kosovo’s decision to follow the United Arab Emirates in taking the step.
Making that observation at the White House on Friday, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien called it “a very remarkable breakthrough.”
Never mind, of course, that neither country was ever at war with Israel.
Goodenough was in press-release mode again in a Sept. 11 article, declaring that "President Trump on Thursday portrayed himself as a Middle East peacemaker, pointing to breakthroughs between Israel and Arab states, looming U.S. troop drawdowns, and apparent signs of progress in Afghanistan." A few days later, he was the willing scribe for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who "repudiated House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s jibe that President Trump’s progress in the Middle East is a “distraction” from the coronavirus crisis. He also warned that "opponents" like "The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Code Pink, and dozens other organizations are planning to protest near the White House during Tuesday’s signing ceremony."
As President Trump on Tuesday presided over first diplomatic agreements between Israel and Arab nations in 26 years, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu urged naysayers to “rise above” political divides and to “put all cynicism aside.
“Despite the many challenges and hardships that we all face, despite all that, let us pause for a moment to appreciate this remarkable day,” he said at the White House ceremony.
[...]
The signing took place on the exact spot where, 27 years and two days earlier, President Clinton oversaw the signing of the interim Oslo accords between Israel and the PLO.
The interactions between the principals – even despite the coronavirus-related absence of handshaking – seemed considerably warmer and less awkward on Tuesday than they were on that day in 1993.
Goodenough didn't all the hagiography fun; Susan Jones uncritically repeated National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien obsequiously declaring that Trump "will be known as a peacemaker. And an op-ed from wacky pro-Trump rabbi Aryeh Spero slobbered that "This is yet another outstanding achievement by President Trump regarding Israel and the Middle East and demonstrates our president's unique abilities to bring to life that which has eluded other leaders. This is truly a manifestation of 'The Art of the Deal.'"
Last week, when a deal was announced between Israel and Sudan, Goodenough was on hand to gush again:
Another foreign policy achievement weeks before the election? President Trump tweeted Monday that the U.S. will remove Sudan from its list of state-sponsors of terrorism, once Khartoum pays $335 million as agreed to U.S. terror victims. As a kicker, Sudan may then become the third Arab country in two months to normalize relations with Israel.
The news of the first part of that reported deal came in the form of tweet from the president: “New government of Sudan, which is making great progress, agreed to pay $335 MILLION to U.S. terror victims and families. Once deposited, I will lift Sudan from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. At long last, JUSTICE for the American people and BIG step for Sudan!”
[...]
If that materializes, it would be another example of the type of unorthodox deal-making, which last month delivered Israel another Muslim-majority diplomatic partner, Kosovo, as part of a broader U.S.-brokered economic normalization agreement between Kosovo and Serbia. (As a bonus, both Balkan countries also reportedly agreed to locate their embassies in Jerusalem, rather than Tel Aviv.)
This was followed by an Oct. 26 attempt to dunk on John Kerry for no reason other than that he's shilling for the Trump campaign:
The Trump administration now appears to be doing something that former Secretary of State John Kerry said could never be done.
In late 2016, Kerry told a think tank audience, “There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world.”
[...]
Kerry is a top foreign policy adviser to Democratic presidential nominee’s Joe Biden’s campaign.
[...]
After years of following that conventional thinking and frustrated attempts by a series of U.S. administrations to secure an Israel-Palestinian accord, President Trump’s team took a different tack. It marginalized the Palestinian leadership – while undercutting its diplomatic initiatives at the U.N. – and focused on encouraging Arab states to make separate deals with Israel.
If Goodenough was ever an objective reporter, he certainly isn't one anymore -- he's been fully assimilated into the right-wing CNS borg.
CNS Rushes To Attempt To Distance Trump's Antibody Cocktail From Aborted Fetal Cells Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has long fearmongered about the use of fetal cells or tissue derived from abortion in the devlopment of vaccines and other medicines. In 2016 it touted a House committee report claiming that "Fetal tissue has not been directly linked to a single medical cure in 90 years of fetal tissue research, followed by an op-ed from an anti-abortion activist discouraging the use of fetal cells to develop a Zika vaccine. Editor Terry Jeffrey heavilylobbiedagainst the federal government funding research that made use of fetal cells from abortions, even if the research was developing vaccines. And earlier this year, another anti-abortion activist cheered the discontinuation of that funding, declaring that "None of the vaccines, treatments, or FDA-approved cellular and gene therapy products on the market use human fetal tissue from elective abortions that rely on ongoing abortions."
So when it was reported that the antibody drug cocktail given to Presient Trump was derived from fetal cells, CNS quickly went into spin mode. Lucy Collins did the first piece on Oct. 12, citing people from the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute:
In a press call on Friday, biochemists David Prentice, Ph.D., and Tara Sander Lee, Ph.D., disputed claims that the treatment President Donald Trump received to combat his coronavirus infection was made from aborted fetal cells or tissues.
Prentice is the vice president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute and Lee is a senior fellow in Life Sciences at the Institute.
Lee described the recent news stories about Trump receiving an antibody cocktail that may have been made from an aborted cell line or aborted tissue as a “complete misunderstanding of Regeneron antibody cocktail.”
[...]
“The [fetal] cells were not used to create the antibody cocktail itself,” Prentice explained, “They were used, however, to test the potency of the antibody product, so these studies were separate from production of the antibody cocktail that's actually used to treat the Covid 19 patients, including President Trump. As Regeneron itself said, they were used in any other way.”
The biochemists conceded that the drug was tested, albeit not manufactured, by using a 50-year-old cell line originally derived from aborted fetal cells. Prentice and Lee said this specific practice is widespread and not the same ethical dilemma as using “fresh” aborted fetal tissue or cells.
“It was tested using fetal cells, but ones that are almost 50 years old, certainly not fresh aborted fetal tissue or any new cells,” said Prentice.
But Collins apparently still wasn't convinced that wasn't an "ethical dliemma":
CNS News sked Lee if the cocktail produced by Regeneron and tested with the fetal cells was the only one available for treatment for President Trump or if he could have chosen a drug that was not tested using a fetal cell line.
Lee said, “That company made the choice to use the fetal cell line, they could have chosen to use a different cell line that would not have created the controversy.”
“Our point about this is that those cells were not used in any way in terms of the production, that the ethical choice there then does not rest on the recipient of the particular treatment or vaccine,” said Prentice.
In an effort to further absolve Trump of violating whatever anti-abortion pledge he may have made by taking the cocktail, Melanie Arter wrote an article the same day featuring the CEO of Regeneron similarly insisting that "our drug is not manufactured using fetal cells" after CBS pointed out that the cell line from which the antibodies were derived "were harvested from the kidney tissue of an aborted fetus" and that "the Trump administration last year has suspended federal funding for research projects that involve fetal tissue from abortions."
CNS apparently considers the subject closed now, for it has done no more articles on the subject of fetal tissues in coronavirus treatements nor even published an op-ed on the subject. Its writers are not getting paid to make Trump look bad, after all.
CNS Again Cheers Low Refugee Caps Under Trump Topic: CNSNews.com
Earliler this year, we documented how CNSNews.com reporter Patrick Goodenough spent years obsessed that the U.S. was letting in too many Muslim refugees and not enough Christian ones, and he was extremely happy that President Trump not only cut down on the number of Muslim refugees but sharply reduced the number of all refugees. Well, Goodenough is back on the refugee beat, again apparently happy that Trump is keeping refugee numbers low.
Goodenough cheered in a Sept. 22 article that "With fewer than ten days of the fiscal year to go, the Trump administration has admitted just 10,233 refugees into the United States since October 1 last year – 56.8 percent of the record-low cap of 18,000 admissions in FY 2020, which it set last fall." Then he fearmongered about the Democratic candidate for president:
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, however, has pledged if elected to set a cap of 125,000 refugees a year, with the aim to raise it further “over time commensurate with our responsibility, our values, and the unprecedented global need.”
Biden’s promised ceiling would be the highest since 1993, when a cap of 142,000 was established (although actual admissions that year were somewhat lower, just below 120,000).
The highest ceiling on refugee admissions fixed during the Obama-Biden administration was 85,000, in 2016, while under President George W. Bush the annual caps ranged between 70,000 and 80,000, and under President Clinton between 78,000 and 142,000.
Goodenough didn't explain why any of this was a bad thing. He did, however, return to his religious refugee body counts, noting that "Refugees identifying as Christians comprise 73.6 percent of FY 2020 total" and that "Refugees identifying as Muslims account for 22.5 percent of the total, comprising large majorities among the groups of refugees from Syria, Sudan, Somalia, and Afghanistan."
Goodenough followed up on Oct. 1, pronouncing that "Fiscal year 2020 ended overnight with the smallest number of refugees resettled in the United States in more than 40 years, and the Trump administration setting a cap on 15,000 refugee admissions for fiscal year 2021," making sure to add that "Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushed back at a reporter’s question on about whether the U.S. was doing enough to ease the global refugee crisis" by claoming that "There’s no more generous nation anywhere in the world when it comes to alleviating human crises around the world."
Goodenough was in full defense mode the next day as he gave the Trump State Department the floor to defend its record-low refugee cap:
Amid criticism over the Trump administration’s move to set a new record-low limit of 15,000 refugee admissions in fiscal year 2021 – reducing the annual ceiling for the fifth consecutive time – the State Department said Thursday the proposal reflected a “continuing commitment to prioritize the safety and well-being of Americans, especially in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.”
It also took into account a massive backlog of asylum-seeker cases, it said, referring to more than 1.1 million people already inside the U.S. whose applications for asylum are pending (as opposed to applicants for refugee status, who apply outside the country for resettlement through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.)
The department said in its announcement it expected “more than 290,000” new asylum claims to be received during FY 2021, which began on Thursday.
It also contended that the number of refugees resettled should not be seen in isolation from broader U.S. humanitarian-based immigration activity.
Goodenough did concede the low cap is being "heavily-criticized." Not by him, of course.
When President Trump underwent treatment for coronavirus, CNSNews.com ramped up its usual pro-Trump spin even more.
Patrick Goodenough's initial story was highly sympathetic, avoiding any mention of how Trump's own behavior in largely refusing to wear masks and leading mostly mask-free rallies may have contributed to him catching the virus. The real spin began with a follow-up article by Susan Jones, who touted Trump telling Fox News' Sean Hannity before his diagnosis was announced that coronavirus is "a very, very tough disease,"in an apparent attempt to potray Trump as having taken the disease seriously despite his long record of doing otherwise. Melanie Arter, meanwhile, pushed the White House narrative that Trump's coronavirus symptoms were mild.
Another article by Arter complained that Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar -- whom CNS despises -- accused Trump having spread coronavirus during a campaign visit to Minnesota two days before his coronavirus diagnosis was announced. It has since been revealed that the Trump campaign refused to follow health guidelines and state regulations for the rally by letting in many more people than were allowed.
The spin continued with an article by Craig Bannister on the experimental drug cocktail Trump was given, followed by Jones featuring a Trump campaign adviser Stever Cortes "took reasonable risks, not reckless ones" and scoffing at the fact that several people who attended a Trump White House event before his diagnosis was announced had since tested positive for coronavirus.
Jones was in full Trump rah-rah mode when parroting his insistence that he's 'learned a lot about COVID ... by really going to school," adding that he made a motorcade drive around the Walter Reed Medical Center grounds "amid media anger over the perceived lack of transparency about his doctors' health briefings." (That's the only reference to that lack of transparency at CNS.) Later, she cheered how Trump sent out "at least 18 tweets in rapid succession, explaining what's at stake in the upcoming election" while still in the hospital. In that same vein, Arter pulled stenographer duty by uncritically repeating a Trump campaign spokesman sneering that "with COVID, with a quarantine, at Walter Reed, this president still did more events yesterday than did Joe Biden."
Editor Terry Jeffrey grumbled that "A maskless Chuck Schumer—the Senate Democratic Leader--stood on a sidewalk in New York City on Sunday and ranted about President Donald Trump holding a 'super-spreader' event at the White House where many people in attendance did not wear masks as Trump announced the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court." In fact, no less than Dr. Anthony Fauci later called the Barrett announcement a "superspreader" event -- something CNS has censored.
Finally, Jones gushed at how Trump "faced the cameras and pointedly removed his face mask" upon his return to the White House and issued a message saying Americans shouldn't let the virus "dominate you." She did note that "at least 197,029 people have died from COVID in this country," but didn't venture an opinion on whether they died because they allowed the virus to dominate them.
Cleanup Mode Again: CNS Does Damage Control on Trump's Non-Denial of White Supremacy Topic: CNSNews.com
As we documented, it took nearly a day for CNSNews.com to report the big news from the first presidential debate -- that President Trump couldn't quite denounce white suprmacism and right-wing extremism. But once it reported that, CNS was forced into damage control, a position it's familiar with.
Carig Bannister complained that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cited an "incomplete quote" of Trump to declare Trump a white supremacist, claiming that "Trump twice answered 'Sure' to [moderator Chris] Wallace’s question about whether he was 'willing to condemn white supremacists and militia groups'" constituted an actual condemnation. Editor Terry Jeffrey did the same thing in responding to Nancy Pelosi's claim that Trump "would not disassociate himself" from white supremacists, declaring that "In fact, during the debate when moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump whether he was 'will tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups,' Trump said: 'Sure.'"
Melanie Arter did this as well, first noting Joe Biden's post-debate "cease and desist" response to Trump telling the far-right thugs of the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by," and then declaring that "As CNSNews.com previously reported, Trump was asked to condemn white supremacists and militia groups at the presidential debate, to which Trump said, 'Sure, I’m willing to do that. I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not the right wing. I'm willing to do anything. I want to see peace.'"
CNS then brought out the big guns: former pro football player Hershel Walker asserting that "Trump is not a racist." This was followed by a reworking by Craig Bannister of a piece from CNS' parent, the Media Research Center (who similarly played damage control over this) counting the "19 times" Trump has denounced racism, hufing that "two days after the first Trump-Biden presidential debate, the media continued to badger Pres. Trump, alleging that he hadn’t yet condemned white supremacists and, in particular, a group called the Proud Boys. And, once again, the president issued a clear, unequivocal condemnation of all racists and racist organizations."
Finally, CNS resorted to Charlie Daniels Jr., who's now writing a column at CNS in place of the one his late father wrote. He sarcastically whined that "the only sensible plan I can think of to allow President Trump to put this to rest once and for all" is that Trump "shall henceforth be required to condemn white supremacists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, and all forms of racism every hour on the hour for the remainder of his life, and if he fails to do so, everyone will know with absolute certainty that he’s a racist."
Daniels even defended the honor of the Proud Boys: "the only problem is that they are NOT a white supremacist group. They aren’t even exclusively white. Their leader is -- in fact -- Cuban."
Not a good look, CNS (and Mr. Daniels).
UPDATE: CNS also went surprisingly crankypants on an ideological ally, Fox News correspondent John Roberts, complaining that he "badgered Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnanyover whether President Trump denounces white supremacy today – even though McEnany told him the president did so the day before" and that "Roberts’ wife, Kyra Phillips, was actually one of those Trump personally denounced white supremacy to on Wednesday."
CNS' Debate Bias: Rebuttals And Snark For Biden, Stenography For Trump Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's coverage of the first debate between President Trump and Joe Biden tracks with its usual pro-Trump slant: Statements by Trmp were presented without comment, while statements by Biden tended to be rebutted or snarked it with added editorial comment.
First, let's look at the Biden coverage (judged by Biden's prominence in the headline):
Patrick Goodenough -- who loves to fact-check Biden while giving Trump a pass -- complained that "Joe Biden in Tuesday’s presidential debate accused President Trump, again, of not asking China to allow U.S. health experts to visit Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak – a claim that has been debunked."
Goodenough also wrote that Biden "seemed eager to get across during Tuesday night’s combative presidential debate in Cleveland, Ohio was that he is his own man, not beholden to the left wing of the Democratic Party," adding that his campaign worked with "democratic socialist senator" Bernie Sanders on a 110-page "manifesto" that "if implemented, will make Biden the most progressive president since FDR."
Melanie Arter wrote that Biden "said Tuesday that he does not support the Green New Deal, which President Donald Trump pointed out would cost Americans $100 trillion, and Trump said by not doing so, Biden 'just lost the radical left.'"
Susan Jones huffed that Biden declined to "answer the simple question" of whether he "would support Democrat [sic] calls to end the Senate filibuster and add more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court."
Another Jones article featuring Biden's "reopening plan" for the coronavirus pandemic had several paragraphs of transcript before Jones snarked that Biden "finally addressed the topic."
CNS published only two Biden-centric debate-related articles that were a relatively straight retelling of what happened:
By contrast, CNS published only three articles that keyed in on comments by Trump as indicated by the headline, and all three simply uncritically repeated what he said:
That's not surprising, given that both were written by chief Trump stenographer Melanie Arter.
Because Trump was not seen to have won the debate, CNS quickly issued a couple attacks on moderator and Fox News host Chris Wallace -- from its favorite right-wing radio host, Mark Levin, and in a blog post by editor Terry Jeffrey complaining that Wallace "personally engaged President Trump in a debate on 'climate change' that lasted for about 3 minutes and 45 seconds."
It was not until more than 18 hours after the end of the debate that CNS bothered to mention the big news from it: Trump's refusal to explicitly disavow white supremacists and his telling the Proud Boys hate group to "stand back and stand by." This being written by Arter, it's written blandly and plays whataboutism by also putting in the headline that Biden said Antifa is "an idea, not an organization."
CNS Keeps Up The Spin On COVID Case Numbers Topic: CNSNews.com
Over the past few months, CNSNews.com -- mostly reporter Susan Jones -- has been heavilyspinning coronavirus case and mortality numbers, obscuring the summer surge by comparing it to the initial surge earlier this year. The spin hasn't let up.
A Sept. 15 article by Jones carried the headline "COVID-19 Deaths in Last Week of August Down 83.8% From April Peak and touted how "the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 has now declined for at least five straight weeks since late July." Jones shifted her spin in a Sept. 22 article:
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 283,358 new cases of coronavirus in this county in the last seven days -- 37,417 reported yesterday -- for a total of 6,786,352 presumed or diagnosed cases since the first reported cases in February.
Yet based on death certificates submitted so far to CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, have decreased for at least five straight weeks since July 25.
For the final week of August, or the week ending August 29, NCHS recorded 4,306 presumed or confirmed COVID deaths, a 20.71 percent decrease from the 5,431 COVID deaths reported in the prior week; a 45.55 percent drop from the 7,909 deaths in the week ending July 25; and a 74.75 percent decrease from the record 17,055 deaths reported for the week ending April 25.
In another Sept. 22 article, Jones tried to shift blame for the virus in an article headlined "CDC: Adult Obesity, a Risk Factor for COVID, Is Increasing," making sure to highlight that obesity "increases the risk of severe illness from COVID-19."
Jones' Sept. 29 article was a bit of a corrective, but still featured her old spin:
As more death certificates are tabulated by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, it now appears that the COVID death toll ticked up, not down, in the week that ended on August 1, by the very smallest of margins.
For the week ending August 1, NCHS counted 7,974 COVID-19 deaths, just two more than the 7,972 recorded in the prior week.
That second COVID death peak of 7,974 is 53.24 percent below the first peak (17,055) in mid-April.
Jones had somewhat less spin and more reality in her Oct. 6 article:
Updated numbers from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that since mid-July, approximately one thousand people have died every day in this country from COVID-19.
That's well below the mid-April peak, when 17,063 people died in the week ending April 18.
But it's an acceleration from the six-week stretch in June and early July, when the number of weekly deaths ranged from 3,777 (week ending June 27) to 5,665 (week ending July 11).
Jones tried to spin harder in her Oct. 13 article, lamenting "new cases in all 50 states and the District of Columbia over the last seven days, with the highest per-capita increases in the upper Midwest/West" but declaring that "at the same time, data based on death certificates submitted to CDC show deaths have been dropping since the week ending August 1."
Patrick Goodenough tried his hand at spinning COVID in an Oct. 13 article by finding a new way to count dead people: "As a proportion of the national population, the United States has accounted for fewer deaths attributed to the coronavirus this month than any other major country in the Western Hemisphere except for Canada, although still more than those in Western Europe."
That's what spinning for Trump is all about.
UPDATE: Jones spins even more in an Oct. 20 article, noting a rise in coronavirus cases but declaring that "while cases are rising in most states, deaths are not rising at the same rate: CDC counts 0.2 deaths per 100,000 people in the last seven days."
CNS Notices Only Polls That Make Trump Look Good Topic: CNSNews.com
Joe Biden is leading President Trump by a large margin nationwide -- but you'll rarely read about that at CNSNews.com, despite it claiming to be a "news" operation. Because CNS is operated by the Media Research Center, the media arm of the Trump campaign, the polls it promotes are cherry-picked to fluff Trump and avoid bad news about his campaign.
For example: An Aug. 21 article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman ignored the national numbers to promote a poll claiming that "Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump are statistically tied in the presidential race" in Minnesota, which Trump lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Needless to say, Chapman ignored theoverall polling that shows Biden with a sizable lead; instead, he pushed polling from the Trafalgar Group, which "weights its polls to account for a 'social desirability bias,' or the so-called shy Trump voters who are embarrassed to tell pollsters they support his candidacy." Trafalgar'spolling gets a C-minus rating from FiveThirtyEight.
Speaking of unreliable pollsters, CNS loves reporting on polls by Rasmussen, which has a notorious pro-Trump bias (on top of being on the unreliable side -- only a C-plus from FiveThirtyEight). Here are the Rasmussen polls CNS touted over the past couple months:
Even with more reputable pollsters like Gallup, CNS worked to cherry-pick results. Chapman found another cherry-picked -- and irrelevant -- finding to push in a couple articles:
Chapman found another weird (and meaningless) Gallup poll finding in an Oct. 7 article: "In a new poll on President Donald Trump's job approval rating, Gallup found that a majority of Americans predict Trump will win reelection -- only 40% said Biden will win. AndCraig Bannister did a lot of reading into another Gallup finding in an Oct. 13 article, working in an attack on Biden in the process:
Far more registered voters say they’re better off now than they were four years than say they’re worse off, a national Gallup Poll conducted September 14-28, 2020 reveals.
Fifty-six percent (56%) said they’re “better off” now than they were four years ago, while just 32% said they’re worse off.
As President Donald Trump seeks reelection, the 56% reporting that they’re better off now than four years ago tops the scores of four other presidents – Barack Obama, George Bush, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan - at the end of their first terms, Gallup reports.
[...]
On Monday, WKRC-TV asked Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden why the 56% of registered voters who feel they're better off today should vote for him. Biden's response: "They probably shouldn't."
But as CNN's Chris Cillizza points out, the finding conflicts with Trump being behind in the polls and other findings showing that people don't personally like Trump, meaning that voters are not necessarily crediting Trump for making them "better off."
UPDATE: CNS also likes fake polls too. Like its Media Research Center overlords, it touted a Twitter poll claiming that a majority of respondents declared Trump the winner of the first debate.And even more than the MRC did, CNS hid the fact that it was an easily manipulated online poll that is utterly meaningless.
Terry Jeffrey Trump Deficit Blame Avoidance Watch Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey has been doing what he does -- complaining about federal deficits while refusing to explicitly assign blame where it lies: on the Republican president and Republican-controlled Senate. Jeffrey complained in a Sept. 11 article:
Federal spending has topped $6 trillion for the first time in any fiscal year in the nation’s history and the federal deficit has topped $3 trillion for the first time, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement for August that was released today.
There is still another month left in fiscal 2020, which runs through the end of September.
As per usual, the words "Trump" and "Republican" do not appear, and it's illustrated with one of his favorite stock photos of Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- falsely implying that Democrats share equal blame for the sice of the deficit when it controls only one-half of one relevant branch of government while Republicans control one and a half branches.
Jeffrey followed up on Oct. 2 with a similar complaint: "The debt of the federal government topped $27 trillion for the first time on Thursday, October 1, when it climbed from an opening balance of $26,945,391,194,615.15 to a closing balance of $27,026,921,935,432.41, according to data published by the U.S. Treasury Department." Again, Jeffrey avoids mention of who's actually in charge of the government, and he uses another stock photo suggesting that Democrats share equal blame.
Both articles note: "The business and economic reporting of CNSNews.com is funded in part with a gift made in memory of Dr. Keith C. Wold." Would Wold actually be happy with Jeffrey's biased, incomplete reporting here? We suspect not.
Ironically, an opinion column published by CNS was (somewhat) more balanced than Jeffrey's supposedly objective reporting. A Sept. 24 column by Hans Bader actually told the truth that Jeffrey won't, but unfortunately went into speculation whataboutism: "Trump let budget deficits rise. Joe Biden will likely increase budget deficits far more."
NEW ARTICLE: At CNS, Fairness Is In Cognitive Decline Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has spent months pushing the Trump-approved narrative that Joe Biden has issues with senility and dementia, which it also imposed on Nancy Pelosi and others. But CNS will never portray Trump's mental slips as anything serious. Read more >>
The Trump-fliuffers at CNSNews.com put in one last pre-election effort to boost his campaign, managing to get a whopping four articles out of a relatively good-looking GDP number.
CNSNews.com worked until the very end to play damage control and cleanup on behalf of President Trump's re-election.
We've 
CNSNews.com covered the final presidential debate the way it 
CNSNews.com is only sporadically interested in weekend crime figures in cities like Chicago -- mostly when it serves its right-wing agenda to be. After a 
CNSNews.com reporter Patrick Goodenoughused to be a relatively unbiased repoerter (by CNS standards, anyway). Over the past couple years, he's been sliding toward 
CNSNews.com has long fearmongered about the use of fetal cells or tissue derived from abortion in the devlopment of vaccines and other medicines. In 2016 it 
Earliler this year, we 
When President Trump underwent treatment for coronavirus, CNSNews.com ramped up its usual pro-Trump spin even more.
As we 
CNSNews.com's coverage of the first debate between President Trump and Joe Biden tracks with its usual pro-Trump slant: Statements by Trmp were presented without comment, while statements by Biden tended to be rebutted or snarked it with added editorial comment.
Over the past few months, CNSNews.com -- mostly reporter Susan Jones -- has been 
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CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey has been 
